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Renew enthusiasm for academic endocrinology
Fellow discusses his experience at The Endocrine Society’s Fourth Annual Clinical Investigators Workshop.
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 Edward C. Chao |
“Enjoy your fellowship to the fullest. No matter what you do, it is the bedrock for a great career,” said Dolores Shoback, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and Director of the UCSF Endocrinology Fellowship Training Program. Those words resonated with me.
Here I am, just a few months into my first year of fellowship and still learning the field. Yet part of being a fellow is building the road that leads to the attending endocrinologist I will one day be. At the same time, we fellows should also enjoy the present, even those days when you get a consult at 4 PM and nothing seems to be going right with your research.
The Endocrine Society’s Fourth Annual Clinical Investigators Workshop held in October represented a unique opportunity for me to gain practical insights about career development. Forty endocrinology fellows gathered for the two-and-a-half day meeting, a mixture of talks, networking breaks, and research presentations to a small group of fellows and endocrinology attending facilitators.
Those interested in attending submitted a one-page research proposal, a CV, and a nomination from their program director. Even if a fellow is not interested in a career in academia, every physician faces a blizzard of journal papers covering both bench research and clinical trials. Each 10- to 15-minute PowerPoint presentation is followed by 10 to 15 minutes of feedback. I learned as much from the process of preparing the presentation as I did from the ensuing discussion.
Shoback discussed the role of a mentor, the amount of time that most mentors can realistically commit to that relationship, and the value of having more than one mentor. Marcia Stefanick, PhD, of Stanford University, detailed how the Diet Modification Trial and the hormone trials within the Women’s Health Initiative were conducted and discussed the clinical implications.
We explored translational research: T1 is research that bridges the bench to the clinic, and T2 takes medical discoveries from the clinic to the larger community. The speakers brought home the message that it is crucial for a clinical researcher to have a solid grounding in basic science. We also received an introduction to the myriad types of National Institutes of Medicine (NIH) grants and tips on how to write a grant.
Sessions also covered the interactions of academia with industry in clinical trials, including some of the potential pitfalls. We discussed ethics in clinical research and another presenter introduced us to working for industry.
Ora Pescovitz, MD, of Indiana University talked about time management, and she provided crucial information about setting priorities and the necessity of taking a long-term view. She outlined the “4C’s of Extraordinary People”: a moral compass, contribution, commitment, and creativity.
The conference heightened my enthusiasm for academic endocrinology and its possibilities. I was also struck by how the pearls and lessons we learned there may not be as easily gained within our day-to-day work routines.
Edward C. Chao, DO, is at the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, University of California, San Diego Medical Center.